The Sixth Degree
by V musicka
Summary: Korra may never know how her smallest decisions have affected her two greatest friends, but she's learning. In a moment of victory, Korra learns that there's more to true friendship - and love - than she ever realized.


_HellOOOOoo!_

_It's been quite a while! Turns out that Tumblr, the new best thing ever, has absorbed pretty much all of my Internet-related attention span for the past couple months. (Ahem, check out the link to my blog in my profile. :D) Of course, this is no excuse for me not updating fics that have needed updating for over a freaking _year_, but you know._

_So. _The Legend of Korra_. Never before has a show brought me such utter joy as the first two episodes of this one has. I am also, of course, up to my eyeballs in the most delicious shipping war ever to hit the net. The best thing about this particular slugfest is that I ship the OT3 like FedEx - in other words, I'm fifty-fifty for Borra and Makorra, and the bromance between the three of them couldn't be sweeter. I'm not kidding. It's beautiful. And I'm in heaven because one of them has to become canon, right?_

_This one-shot is about the Fire Ferrets winning the pro-bending tournament - something that I sincerely hope will happen if Amon doesn't blow everything to heck first. __

_Have fun,_

_-V_

_**Setting:** some future time (roughly two weeks after episode 2) in the pro-bending arena_  
_**Warnings:** Eh, none (we're all pretty much up to speed here in this fandom, yes?)_  
_**Inspiration:** _"Victory Kiss"_ by halfempty15 on Deviant Art, which I also have a colored version of on my blog_  
_**Disclaimer:** I do not and cannot own _The Legend of Korra_, as I have no swag. Bryke and Nickelodeon, however, do._

_And here we go!_

* * *

**The Sixth Degree**  
-

It was clear in that one, glistening moment that this would decide it.

The opponent waterbender's crush of water had shot high, rushing on a collision course with Korra's upper body, fast and unstoppable and massive, versus her own lightning-quick cut of water. She'd slashed low and it tumbled wildly upward in a shallow curve. And there the moment froze in a halo of arena lights, rendering the fatal masses of water transparent and glimmering in the air. Korra was off-balance and the guy was exhausted, and this was all that was left.

Suspension.

The moment cracked, hailing in a tumult of screams and roars from the featureless audience, and Korra did the only thing she could - she ducked her head, flung up her wrists, dug in her heels, and prayed.

_CRASH -_ Korra choked and gasped as the mass smashed into her face with the force of a brick wall, soaking her to the bone through her pro-bending suit and half-blinding her as it forced its way into her helmet. Raw terror sizzled up her legs and her whole body as the balls of her feet parted company with the platform and she was flung briefly backward - but would it be brief enough? How far had she been standing from the edge when she'd been hit? What about her opponent?

If they both took the fifty-foot fall to the water pit below, who would hit the surface first?

Korra, choking, staggered and her spine wrenched desperately as her feet smacked back to solid ground with jarring force - she stumbled, scrambled, and felt her soul drop out the bottoms of her feet as her heels skidded and felt nothing but a pinching edge and open air. With a gasp, she fell forward and hit the ground on all fours, her knees mashed together as vertigo rippled up and down her limbs.

All in the space of a second.

If the other waterbender was still on the platform, Korra was defenseless. She was was done for.

She looked wildly up.

And in an incredible instant, locked eyes with the oddly startled, cerulean gaze of the male waterbender in the black suit. As his arms flailed, one leg hopelessly flung out in the air, his other foot rocking almost gracefully backward. Flinging him into oblivion.

He vanished over the edge.

There was a roar that all but lifted the building off its foundations.

There was a distant splash.

And Korra, still on her hands and knees, stayed tense, waiting somewhere in her consciousness for more fighting, for more bending.

Then the announcer hollered something hysterically over the speakers - the arena lights went positively berserk, making her dizzy - and Korra shakily stood without thinking, feeling the weight of thousands of eyes on her shoulders as the pro-bending arena of Republic City exploded.

Later, Korra never could recall that frozen wait as the small platform lowered back to the ring. There was nothing but swinging beams of light, boiling crowds, screams, shouts, the wailing of the announcer - something about Avatar and rookies and upset and history and story for the ages - and then she was snatched clean off the platform before it had blended with the ring at all. Bolin crushed her to himself, his wild laughter thudding through her whole body as he whisked her helmet off her head in a rush of cool air on her damp skin and sharpened colors on her hazy eyes and he lifted her off her feet and swung her back and forth. Before she knew it, she was laughing, too - flinging her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder and holding on for dear life as she realized what exactly had just happened, who was watching her and how many, and what that meant.

"We won!" Bolin was hollering hoarsely in her ear. "You beat him! We _won_!"

Those of hugs of his - really, she had nothing on him. The instant that he simply held her against him, so tightly and warmly that he was suddenly the only thing that kept her from losing it in the wild crowd and the spinning lights and the exhaustion, was enough to wash a pleasant crackle of electricity from her toes straight up to her pulse and the top of her head.

"We did it," she whispered into his neck, then chuckled. "We _did _it."

He set her down and she stared dizzily into his beaming face, grinning like an idiot, and a blush flooded down her neck as he grabbed her shoulders and pressed his lips to her sweat-slicked forehead.

Then he left her alone, turning and sprinting to the edge of the ring, leaping up onto the ropes and pumping a fist in the air, conducting the swelling, wild screams of the rabid Fire Ferrets fans in the distant stands.

Korra, blinking in the arena lights, drowning slowly in the surreal moment, turned, and felt all her blood heat up and congeal in her veins all at once.

Mako was standing in a daze, not quite looking at her - not looking at anything in particular, she felt. He still had his helmet on, and his eyes were oddly glazed. Whether his victory had washed over him yet or whether it was simply too much for the stoic firebender to bear right then was beyond her, but it was then that she thought she understood him better than she probably ever had before.

A dozen years of training - for this day, for this moment - had finally paid off. All that grubbing in the streets and back alleys of Republic City couldn't be farther behind him now. That wispiness - that feeling of not belonging anywhere, of not being meant for anything, was surely burned away, replaced by a rock steadiness of sorts as he stood there in a chaos of lights and voices. A sense of accomplishment - of belonging.

Mako meant something to someone. All of a sudden, he meant something to a _lot_ of someones.

(And maybe he could realize sometime that all that mattered was that he mattered infinitely to his brother and to Toza and _her._)

Then the winnings. The prize money that Korra already knew she would not touch. The fabulous bending brothers would receive it all, and it would easily feed them both for months - many months. It would pay Toza's rent for longer, if being the mentor of the two (well, maybe now three) most famous and powerful benders in Republic City didn't pay for itself. Mako and Bolin could get jobs, real jobs, in lieu of scrubbing the arena and washing dishes day in and day out. Their lives were changed. They could move out of the rickety attic in the tower. They could live on their own. They could make careers for themselves. All of Mako's heaviest burdens, lifted in one stroke.

She had won their lives for them.

Korra's heart fluttered, almost panicked, as sound filled her head once more and she looked and she saw that Mako was staring at her.

And it got her to wondering. It got her to wondering what would have happened if she'd never decided to sneak into the arena that night. If she had never offered to fill in for Hasook. Where would Mako and Bolin be?

(Suddenly it was about more, _so much more_, than just bending.)

For the first time in her life, she didn't think of herself even once.

She didn't know who reached for whom first. All of a sudden it was hot and sweaty from their exhaustion as they hugged fiercely, all of Mako's stoppered emotions - plugged somewhere in his stupid head and his stupid heart from the sheer weight and number of them - shuddering out of him as he trembled against her. His hands fisted in her pro-bending suit and he pulled her roughly up to his ear.

"Not bad," he whispered.

Shivers wound up her spine and spread a slow heat straight through her core and her throat was strangely tight for such an overwhelmingly joyous moment. He let her pull back and the look on his face was enough to make her want to just - _burst_, to scatter herself in the air and feel everything at once, hear what everyone was saying, feel what they were all feeling.

Of course, she didn't need to.

He was right there - Mako was _right there_, looking at her like _that,_ and her lungs, her thoughts, everything was filled with him, full to bursting with Mako, and any moment now reporters and announcers and crazy fans were going to storm the ring and ask them questions and separate them when she didn't want it to end.

Then a smirk flitted across his face and the most wonderful feeling curled tight in her belly as he swooped down and she laughed and jumped into him, and he hoisted her up against his body with his hands under her thighs and her legs wrapped around him. She buried herself close into him, gently slipping his helmet off and toying with the edges of his dark hair as their foreheads and then their noses brushed. She reveled in his unusually bright golden gaze, the flush that crept down his pale cheeks to his neck and surely further, and the sweet hitch of his breath when she tightened her thighs around his waist.

He was smiling.

"Congrats, Mr. Hat Trick."

And everything else was lost in the deafening roar of the crowd as Korra dived down and crushed her mouth to his.

* * *

_Meep._

_So, yes. Fresh and juicy be fresh and juicy. Even though Makorra's general smexiness won out in this one-shot, I still ship Borra just as hard._ _And Korra is a beast and is my fictional girl crush. She is PERF. This one-shot turned out to be kind of a growing experience for her as she realizes that there's more to being the fabulous bending brothers' friend than just bending. :D  
_

_I love the dynamic between the three of them. Someday, I hope to write a fic where I explore it some more._

_Hope you enjoyed! Please leave all comments and questions in your review, and please do review to your heart's content. Thank you!_

_Stay beautiful,_

_-musicka_


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